Featherweight Bashir Ahmad's road to ONE FC 10 began in the Iraq War

Although he grew up in Virginia, featherweight Bashir Ahmad considers himself woven into the culture of Pakistan. He is Muslim and said he’s visited the country every other year since age 6.

While deployed as a National Guardsman during the Iraq War, Ahmad’s background often helped to defuse tense situations that arose between his fellow soldiers and Iraqis.

It was also during the war that Ahmad discovered a love for hand-to-hand combat, but it was in Pakistan where he decided to spread the gospel of martial arts, and later, to become a professional MMA fighter.

“You have a lot of opportunities to do something positive there,” Ahmad told MMAjunkie.com Radio.

Ahmad started boxing in the National Guard and started taking taekwondo from a former special forces soldier when his deployment was completed. In college, he also picked up Brazilian jiu-jitsu. The more he learned, the more he became immersed in the martial arts lifestyle.

When he returned to Pakistan after his service, he got the idea to teach muay Thai and jiu-jitsu to locals, and he quickly picked up students. In a short period of time, he was teaching and managing a group of hungry student and booking them fights. Along the way, he picked up the urge to compete himself.

“After doing my best to get these guys up to date with how they’re supposed to look at training and competing, I had kind of polished my own game and developed myself through teaching,” Ahmad said. “I decided I needed to started fighting too.”

Ahmad said it was tough to get fights early in his career, and when he did, he was pulling double duty. He would book himself first on a fight card so he could then referee the rest of the event.

In order to better his skills, he traveled to Thailand to study muay Thai. There, he attracted the attention of matchmakers for ONE FC, who were looking for fighters as part of a larger strategy to build talent pools from a variety of Asian countries. The promotion still is attempting to build a groundswell of interest by pitting fighters from different regions against each other. To Ahmad, the contract is a chance to test himself on a bigger platform.

“They’ve done a lot to build the sport in Asia,” he said.

Ahmad (2-0) won his first fight for promotion, besting Shannon Wiratchai via decision at ONE FC 8 in April. Now booked to meet Bruno Pucci (2-0) at “ONE FC 10: Champions and Warriors,” which takes place Friday at Istora Senayan Stadium in Jakarta, Indonesia, and airs via online pay-per-view, he’s put himself in unfamiliar territory.

But by now, Ahmad is used to thriving in different environments. In Pakistan, his students continue to compete in boxing and grappling events. Meanwhile, after preparing himself for fights in the Muslim country, he returned to Virginia to prepare for Friday’s fight.

“I try not to think about things like winning and losing, because in the end, it’s what you do in the fight that’s going to make that happen,” he said. “So I just focus my attention toward doing the same things I’m doing in training. I’m pretty sure this is not going to go all three rounds.”

MMAjunkie.com Radio broadcasts Monday-Friday at noon ET (9 a.m. PT) live from Mandalay Bay Resort & Casino’s Race & Sports Book. The show is hosted by “Gorgeous” George Garcia, MMAjunkie.com lead staff reporter John Morgan and producer Brian “Goze” Garcia. For more information or to download past episodes, go to www.mmajunkie.com/radio.

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